


Killer in Me and the Killer in You

by livwrites



Series: Rodolphus Lestrange Duet [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-31 22:28:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6489808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livwrites/pseuds/livwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange, stuck in Azkaban, have been placed in a single cell together. That arrangement is good for one of them, but not the other. </p><p>Title is from the song "Disarm" by Smashing Pumpkins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Killer in Me and the Killer in You

Rodolphus Lestrange didn't regret anything he had done as a Death Eater, up until this point. The 'up until this point' was because he still was a Death Eater. He didn't believe the Dark Lord was dead. At the moment, though, it was hard to for him to hold on to most sane thoughts, because he was rotting away in a cell in Azkaban surrounded by Dementors.  
  
   
  
For him, though, there was one thought that kept him reasonably sane. He didn't consider it a happy thought; in his eyes it was more of an obsession.  
  
   
  
Rodolphus Lestrange was madly in love with his wife. Bellatrix. He didn't think she loved him as much as he loved her; if she did at all. He had entered into marriage with her, knowing fully that she lusted after the Dark Lord. But he didn't care. He had been attracted to her from the start, in Hogwarts, with her aristocratic Black looks and her elitist views that were virtually identical to his own. Many times Rodolphus had counted himself lucky because he had been born into a respectable pure-blood family and was permitted to marry a Black.  
  
   
  
In some ways, Rodolphus thought it was weird that Bellatrix didn't love him; they were alike in so many ways, most of them relating to the Mark they both carried on their forearms. After the Dark Lord has disappeared - because he was not dead, Rodolphus was adamant about that - he and Bellatrix had easily decided what they were going to do next: track down their master like the loyal Death Eaters they were. The first step had been the Longbottoms. Rodolphus and Bellatrix had easily taken the lead in what had followed; his little brother Rabastan and the kid Crouch had hung back.  
  
   
  
After, he thought they had been connected emotionally. To him, at least, their inner killers had bonded, at least until they had been caught by the Aurors. Then she hadn't even looked at him during their farce of a trial, or on the long trip to Azkaban. Rodolphus briefly wondered, sitting in this cold, grimy, depressing cell in this depressing prison, why they hadn't overpowered the guards and renewed their search.  
  
   
  
He was getting more depressed by the second, he knew that. Rodolphus knew another reason why he wasn't winning his battle to not lose his mind. The Azkaban guards had placed Bellatrix in the same cell as him, for some reason that he didn't know. All the other prisoners were by themselves, suffering alone. But not them. It might have been because they were married - but their marriage, as far as Rodolphus thought Bellatrix was concerned - was a farce, made solely because he was pure-blood and she didn't want to get blasted off the family tree.  
  
   
  
What Bellatrix thought wasn't going to matter, though, Rodolphus thought grimly as he twisted his wedding ring around his finger. She was beginning to go insane from the effects of the Dementors. Now, what he didn't know was whether she had been insane before and it was just starting to show now.  
  
   
  
He shook his head. She hadn't been crazy before, just... sadistic. He had been assigned murders with her, and she had always enjoyed carrying them out. But he was beginning to see signs that she was finally going over the edge, falling off the cliff into insanity. Bellatrix would sit in a corner of their cramped, dingy cell for hours on end, not eating food, muttering about the Dark Lord and how he would return and reward them for remaining loyal when no one else did.  
  
   
  
Of course, for the Dark Lord to praise you for remaining openly loyal, you had to be alive, and Bellatrix, by the look of her now, wasn't going to be in that state much longer.  
  
   
  
Rodolphus rose, shakily, from where he was crouched on the other side of the tiny cell and crawled over to his wife, trying to avoid clanking the chains that fettered his wrists. He carefully took the bowl of thin gruel that passed as nourishment, picked up the spoon and did his best to coax her to eat some. When she resisted, he told her the only thing that he knew would persuade her.  
  
   
  
"Bella," he said quietly, "you can't serve the Dark Lord if you die here." Rodolphus had known beforehand that mentioning the Dark Lord would cause her to want to survive. He admitted to himself that he felt a little bit guilty manipulating the woman he loved, but he needed her. The Dark Lord needed her. Even if she was going to hate him again, he could still love her privately, the way he had loved her ever since they got married (and before that).  
  
   
  
Slowly, Bellatrix ate the watery, un-nutritious food that was supposed to keep prisoners alive while they served their sentence.  
  
   
  
Even more slowly, over the course of the next days, days that stretched into months, which even more slowly become years, Rodolphus stayed alive as well. He thought that he was beginning to feel a return to the days when they were on the run from the Ministry; after torturing the Longbottoms. That was a time when he thought the inner killer in himself had connected with the inner killer in Bellatrix. Over the course of their imprisonment, Rodolphus again believed he could sense this feeling coming back. He knew, deep down, though, that he was deluding himself, and that when they escaped Azkaban (for it was a matter of when, not if), Bellatrix would treat him just the way she always had; the wedding ring was merely a formality.  
  
   
  
Five years later, when the Dementors left Azkaban and the Lestranges managed to leave as well, Rodolphus was proved right.


End file.
